PLS 3rd Learning, Sr. Vice President for Educational Systems Development (Working with a team of former educators and software developers to design and build technology platforms in support of K-12 education.)

New York City Department of Education (Central Park East Secondary School and The Frederick Douglass Academy), Middle and High School English Teacher, Middle School Literacy Coach.

Adjunct Experience:

Canisius College, Adolescent Education Department

City College of New York, Social Foundations of Education Department

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Presenter: “OK, but how do we do it?: Untangling Funds of Knowledge, Culturally Engaged, Culturally Relevant, and Reality Pedagogies,” Buffalo Urban League Young Professionals Urban Education Conference, February 2018.

Co-Presenter: “Becoming a Teacher Leader: How to Implement the Change You Want to See,” Curriculum, Community, Collaboration and Celebration Conference: Transforming Classrooms for a Changing World, Teachers Network, March 2009.

Teacher as architect seems the most apt analogy, as I believe teachers’ work is to design experiences and foster the conditions that allow for learning as well as personal transformation and emancipation. My belief is that educational spaces should be aligned with the mission and goals inherent to a free and just society and that the skills, knowledges, and dispositions that are required for life in such a community should be further developed through academic coursework and experiences.

What does this mean, then, for practice? At the beginning of courses, it is important to assess the prior knowledge and present thinking of course participants. (I intentionally use the term participant here, reflecting my belief that we are co-constructors of knowledge and also to emphasize the active role that everyone is expected to play for the duration of a course.) This process is essential and beneficial in understanding where to begin, how best to organize our sessions, and how to responsively engage students. Further, it is important for students to engage in such an inventory, as they become more aware of their own, sometimes taken-for-granted thinking, and further develop the reasons for their assumptions or beliefs. We then revisit that thinking, considering if/how it has changed and why.

Class sessions should be places to test out ideas and ask questions about the nature of the educational process itself. Paulo Freire (2000, p.19) wrote, “The foundation stone of the whole [educational] process is human curiosity. This is what makes me question, know, act, ask again, recognize.” Fostering a critical inquiry or social justice stance requires that all participants in a course regularly are challenged to ask questions, particularly questions that may require a more imaginative sense, for example, How might things be otherwise? If we are committed to fostering inquiry and curiosity in our K-12 classrooms, then future educators must further develop and refine their own critical stance. Theory and practice are inseparable, and all class participants are encouraged and required to reflect on the practical and pedagogical implications of the theories and philosophies being explored and how the practices they observe in classrooms and schools are situated in social, political, philosophical, and historical contexts.

Dewey (1966, p.87) wrote that, “A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living of conjoint communicated experience.” The classroom, and its structures and practices should reflect this “mode of living” where individuals share, think, question, challenge, engage, develop, and learn in community with one another. I am also inspired by Bill Ayers’s (2004, p.14) notion that, “Teaching as an ethical enterprise is teaching that arouses students, engages them in a quest to identify obstacles to their full humanity and the life chances of others, to their freedom, and then to drive, to move against those obstacles. And so the fundamental message of the teacher for ethical action is this: You must change the world.”

I teach with these goals in mind, and the structures and practices that I develop and integrate into course experiences are tightly aligned with the mission to prepare young people to achieve their academic, personal, and social best.